


the truth is a gift i can't give you yet

by noblealice



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Edge of Tomorrow Fusion, F/M, Mentions of Wells Jaha, Non-permanent character deaths, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 01, Swearing, The 100 (TV) Season 1, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22865977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblealice/pseuds/noblealice
Summary: “Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow.”He deflates a bit but relents, just like she knew he would, just like he has every other day.“Yeah, tomorrow.” Again, his eyes don’t roll but his bangs huff out with his breath, like his whole body is disbelief and exasperation and wants to be rid of her.But he doesn’t leave. He stays sitting in her tent and she closes her eyes for a moment. Fights the instinct to take his hand and just relax in this moment. She won’t get another one like it until tomorrow and there’s so much pain to wade through until then.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 51





	the truth is a gift i can't give you yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awesofying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awesofying/gifts).



> Note: this is pretty AU, like it branches off around S01E08 or S01E09 and keeps very little of canon (Finn who?). The majority of this was written in 2014. 
> 
> ALSO I haven’t watched the show since then so some bits might be a bit OOC. Just posting for myself and for @awesofying, a loyal watcher of The 100 who apprises me of shippy moments. Happy Belated Birthday! 
> 
> Special shout out to @pathstotread who is ALSO a loyal watcher telling me about Bellarke moments, I hope you enjoy this!

**Day Thirteen**

She knows that some people used to keep count of their days on the Ark. Knows that kids used to count the days until they saw their parents again. Knows that Raven used to count the days until she could visit Finn. There was no point in counting the days in solitary confinement. They’d just as easily be days since her Mom killed her Dad and that was best not to dwell on, not with time for everyone in the Ark running out.

If she knew that she was going to relive the same day over and over again, she would’ve kept count earlier. But she didn’t realize it at first and didn’t understand for a while after that.

It’s not something she’s ever read about or heard in stories and there isn’t exactly a pamphlet titled “So You’re Reliving One Day for All Eternity...”

She does start keeping track, though, just to methodically cross options off the list of “ _Why_ am I reliving the same day for all eternity?” She arbitrarily decides to start at thirteen, because she’s never believed it to be unlucky and it’s just as good a number as twelve.

It has nothing to do with the fact that she thought about telling Bellamy that day.

She wasn’t that desperate, and she has multiple other options to try before asking Bellamy, of all people, for advice about dying just to wake up again like nothing had happened.

 _What would he even say to that?_ She thinks before dusting off her hands on her pants. It doesn’t matter, she’ll never find out.

**Day Twenty Four**

Sometimes, Clarke feels like she’s missed him for so long that it’s a part of her.

And at the same time it feels like it just happened, that he was just here, hugging her close to him. So many important things have happened that it would be foolish to try to compartmentalize her grief into the broad terms of Before Wells Died and After Wells Died.

So many other people have died now, she feels guilty to focus on only one, but she still doesn’t know what she’ll do if she lives long enough that the days listed in ‘After’ will outnumber those from ‘Before’. She doesn’t know who she will be if she isn’t Wells’ best friend. She’s known him for almost 18 years and she’s been without him now for twenty four days.

Forty eight, if you count the day she’s lived over and over again.

She thinks of all the other days in her life when she needed a do-over. All the days she needed something to change. There are so many lives she’s watched go underneath her hands, so many people’s suffering she could have prevented. She knows the name of every kid that’s died on the ground, but she is selfish and she dwells on her friend.

She could have kept Lincoln from being tortured, could have found the radio before the Ark sacrificed 300 people...well, she could have done a lot of things differently.

She thinks about all of these, but what she thinks the most about is that if she was going to get a day to repeat, why wasn’t it a day that would allow her to save her best friend?

It’s this thought that is running around her brain when Bellamy walks up to her, exactly on time.

(A couple times she tried to find Bellamy, tried to get an early start on her repeated day, but she learned the hard way that it’s easier to wait for him. For some reason whoever or whatever is doing this wants her to eat her cold cereal and watch the breakfast meal get served with Bellamy at her shoulder.)

She drops the empty bowl unceremoniously by her feet. “What’s so special about today?”

“What’s that?”

“Why does today get special treatment? What could possibly happen today that’s important enough to do….” She gestures at everything around them with the hand still holding the spoon, “...this?” She thinks, _what’s more important than Wells?_

“What are you talking about?”

And so another attempt at today begins.

(She still doesn’t tell him. Hasn’t worked up the courage to hear him call her crazy. She doesn’t think she could handle that right now.)

**Day Thirty Five**

“Why are you repeating everything I say?” Bellamy asks.

“Technically, it’s not repeating if I say it at the same time as you. And it’s because you always say the same thing.” He takes great effort not to roll his eyes at her smart-alec logic. It probably comes with being the only kid on the Arc with a sibling, she thinks. Bellamy’s tolerance for bullshit out-passes hers.

"Always?" "Always."

"Stop that!" "Stop that!"

She covers his mouth with his hand. “If you don’t want me to keep doing it, listen to me. Yes, you always say the same thing. Well, at least a couple times now. You surprise me every once in a while.”

He looks down at her hand, his eyebrows winging up with a dramatic flair.

She kinda hates him in this moment, when he’s sarcastically asking her permission to talk again and she wishes that this conversation would just get a move on. She removes her hand, and as if reading her mind, he doesn’t comment on her abrupt method of silencing him. Just gets to the point. “How many times have you already lived through today?”

She shrugs. “Like this? Only seventeen. Not even old enough to get floated.” She says the last bit with a smile, like this isn’t terrifying or reality-altering.

In typical Bellamy-fashion he moves past her attempt at levity and narrows in on what matters.“What do you mean ‘like this’?”

She loses his gaze, finding the dirt somewhat more interesting than the way he’s staring at her. “My days do change depending on what I do. My actions affect different things. I’ve lived the same day many times but this version, this conversation, has only happened seventeen times.”

“Why _this_ conversation so many times?”

“Because you’re remarkably stubborn and keep making me explain things to you!” She huffs out, her irritation showing.

“Clarke, that’s not answering my question. _Why this conversation so many times?_ ”

“Because….” She loses her steam and bites her lip, debates telling him the first thought that flickered in her head before the politician in her swapped it out with a more palatable lie. _That means it’s the truth_ , Bellamy once told her, a couple lives ago now.

The truth means so much to him. More than it ever did to her. It makes it a gift every time she can give it to him. She tries, but today she might not be strong enough.

“Because what?”

 _….because I last the longest when I tell you. And it still hurts when I die._ She thinks but does not say.

“Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

He deflates a bit but relents, just like she knew he would, just like he has every other day.

“Yeah, tomorrow.” Again, his eyes don’t roll but his bangs huff out with his breath, like his whole body is disbelief and exasperation and wants to be rid of her.

But he doesn’t leave. He stays standing in her tent and she closes her eyes for a moment. Fights the instinct to take his hand and just relax in this moment. She won’t get another one like it until tomorrow and there’s so much pain to wade through until then.

**Day Fifty Two**

She waits for him to sit down and get comfortable before she begins. She can’t help the weary sigh that escapes her. She feels so tired of this day.

“Let’s try for the short version: You trust me?”

He looks like he’s about to ask about the long version but then he just meets her gaze and replies with a simple “Of course” He says it with a certainty and conviction that shocked her when she first asked him, but now the lack of hesitation warms her inside.

“You just saw me eat?”

Now he’s starting to get wary. Unsure where this is going and disliking not being in control of the situation. “Yeah?”

“You were with me all of yesterday, right?”

“Yes.” He narrows his eyes at her and bluntly asks, “what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know why or how, I don’t know if it’s a side effect of living on the ground or something else. I don’t know if it’s because I stepped on the wrong plant or if this is all an incredibly lucid fever dream. All I do know is that I’ve already lived today. No matter what happens, or where I am, once I close my eyes at the end of the day, I wake up in my tent again and it’s always Wednesday.”

She’s been leaving the whole 'I die every day'-part out of it for the last couple of days. It speeds the conversation along. Bellamy always tends to get stuck on that bit. Her dying. How he can stop it. It’d be annoying if she didn’t understand exactly how he feels, like he can’t stand to lose another person on the ground.

She’s trying to remember if she’s missed something. Bellamy always has a thousand questions and if she leaves even one possibility unexplained, he’ll latch onto it and drag her along in his quest to fix her.

She doesn’t want to be _fixed_ right now. She wants to be able to control it. She’s zoned out a bit but he’s still talking so she hasn’t missed anything important.

“……I’m supposed to believe that, what? You traveled back in time? And you’ve done it more than once? “

She pinches the bridge of her nose. “No. I don’t think it’s time travel and I know it doesn’t make sense. All I can do is tell you that I’ve seen this sunrise about four dozen times and we’ve had this conversation before.”

She pulls on his arm to pull him up to the door flap of her tent. Positions his body so he has the right vantage point for her purposes. “Watch, this always seems to work for you. Echo is about to trip.” Clarke then checks Wells’ watch and points over her shoulder. “Fox is going to say ‘Any chance for strawberries in this climate?’ and then Monty replies ‘If you can find me a seed, I can grow it’.”

She pivots him back so he’s looking at her again. “Now you’re wondering that if I’ve gone through this day before I should be able to tell you what number you’re thinking of.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“It was 12. The last year you were able to tell Octavia what to do and she actually listened to you.”

“I wasn’t thinking about a damn number.” His anger is so ruffled and purely Bellamy that it makes her weirdly fond.

“Now you’re wondering what else you’ve told me when you thought you wouldn’t have to face me the next day.”

He pauses for a moment, thinking this over. “I’m assuming I told you something personal then, to verify that you’ve had a conversation with me that I don’t remember?”

“Yes, but you asked me not to talk about it. Just to say ‘Aurora’, she’s someone important to you.”

He bristles at the name. His hand freezes from where it was about to run through his hair. "You coulda gotten that name from my file. Records on the Ark. Talking to your Mom.” She hates this part, causing him to be so upset and unsettled.

She continues, as gentle as she can, “you said to tell you that she got you your cadet posting.”

“I said that?” He looks broken and she tries to lighten the mood.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know how you _lost_ your cadet posting.” She gives him a small, watery smile, the best she can do at the moment.

He doesn’t register it. Just deflates and slumps down on her bed as he says,“shit.”

“Yeah, shit.”

“So, _have_ you been to your mother?”

“Not the first time, obviously. But in the beginning, I radioed her a lot, actually. I had to stop though, it always seemed to create a panic. Kids thought that the grounders had found a way to get inside our minds. Jaha would order a guard be posted outside the medical tent and one time a sinkhole swallowed us up."

He rises to his feet quickly. “A sink--there are people in that medical tent, Clarke! We gotta get them out if--”

“Don’t worry, it seems to be fine if I stay out of there”

“Oh it’s _fine_? I’m supposed to believe that what? Death follows you specifically? That you’re so special that--”

She cuts him off, tired again. Wishing she could just shake him into understanding. “Like, it wants me to act out this day a certain way and I’m punished if I mess up.”

“You’re making it sound like a person is behind this, something with intelligence. We should get help, this isn’t a thing I’m qualified to deal with.”

“We can’t tell anyone. Please. You have to trust me on that. It always gets out and it never ends well.”

“Clarke--”

“They tried keeping it quiet, but every time I told the Ark there would always be someone outside the inner circle who found out. The last time I told my mother I was shot by a kid who thought I was an evil omen.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Getting shot? Yeah, like a bitch.”

“Fucking hell, Clarke,” He pauses, reconsidering his words. “I mean,....so far it sounds like you never close your eyes to sleep, that you never make it to sunset.”

He catches on quick and it’s hard to remember that she’s the only one who’s had this conversation before.

She wonders when they got close enough that she could whisper and still be heard, but she’s grateful that she doesn’t have to give this next particular memory more volume than the weight it already holds over her. “One time I tried to sleep. Never left my tent all day. Listened as people got hurt when I could have prevented it. Heard their screams….” She trails off, ashamed and takes a step back from Bellamy’s warmth.

She moves her thumb over her throat. “Poison fog rolls in from the east unless I stop it.”

She shifts her feet and pulls her shoulders back, head high like her father taught her. “Farthest I’ve lasted is around eight thirty. In the beginning I was lucky if I made it to three.”

“Okay, so I’m assuming you’ve tried multiple scenarios. Walk me through what hasn’t worked so far.”

“Well, the first couple times it was diagnosed as exhaustion or delusion, maybe the consequences of some bad food. I was confused and scared and no-one remembered that they’d already examined me or asked me that question before. I wasted a lot of time in the beginning, trying to go through proper channels with procedures and councils and emissaries”

“Emmissar--, you asked the _Grounder clans_ for help?” He’s more disbelief than anger and it's her turn to try not to roll her eyes.

“Come on, Bell, keep up. For a long time we thought they were the answer. But then they claimed that I was possessed when we thought it might be a new symptom of the radiation. I’m not in the mood to listen to whatever new thing they can think of that explains why I’m living today over and over.”

She wonders when she started thinking of them as a team. Then she resolves that she’s glad that she at least has Bellamy by her side, she doesn't know how long she’d last if she had to navigate this all alone.

**Day Sixty Three**

“You’re the only person I can tell.” She means for it to be an off-hand comment. It was a thought that just bubbled up in her mind.

“Hmm?” He rumbles, from deep in his chest.

Now that the thought is crystal clear, it almost jumps out of her mouth. She _needs_ to tell Bellamy this. “I tried telling my mother and she wanted to have me sedated. She claimed I was exhausted and ordered me pumped me full of fluids. I said no, but hours later I got hit on the head and woke up restrained.”

“Hard to believe anyone catching you off guard, and you’re saying some of our kids attacked you? No one even looks at you without your permission.”

“Not so hard to imagine. There are kids who would do anything for their parents and Jaha holds their fate in his hands. And my mother holds his in her hands.”

“I tried telling the kids directly but no one believed me. My next option was trying to find the Mountain that the Grounders are so scared of, see if they know what’s happening.”

Just like he has every other time she mentions the Grounders, he reflexively moves his hand to the gun at his side. “Clarke, there’s gotta be better options left.”

“Raven laughs me off. Octavia thinks I’m delusional. Jasper and Monty want to talk about anything else but this, but….” She pauses, a small smile widening her cheeks.

“...you just leave me alone. You listen.” She tilts her chin up to look at him, her eyes flitting across his features.

“Why wouldn’t I?” He says, annoyed.

Her smile grows. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m thanking you. It’s nice to just...sit.” She takes his hand and they share a moment, looking in each other’s eyes. It feels almost peaceful, she can almost imagine that it’s a regular day.

She only has about a minute of enjoying it before more screams erupt from the Dropship and they both scramble to their feet.

**Day Seventy Eight**

He’s pacing across the camp, brows determined and stern. “Clarke, you saved my life yesterday.”

It’s not impossible for him to surprise her but it’s getting rarer. Yet the way he looks at her with such intensity has her stumbling. “What?”

“My yesterday. Not yours. Fuck, do you even remember?”

She’s got that inscrutable stare of hers working overtime, like if she wills it hard enough then she can stop whatever it is he’s about to say.

Of course, he wouldn’t be Bellamy if he took goddamn social cues so he barrels on anyways, despite her mentally willing him to be quiet.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that…..maybe you weren’t supposed to. Maybe whatever this is,” he gestures in a circular motion to the canopy of trees above them, “it’s trying to fix a mistake.”

It takes a moment for his point to kick in, her brain sluggish with this new information, like it doesn’t want to consider the possibility. “You’re saying I need to let you die?”

“Maybe.”

She doesn’t stumble this time. Her spine is steel and resolve. This is not something she can consider.

“Not happening. No one from our camp dies while I can still do something about it.”

 _Especially not you_ , she thinks. _What would I do without you?_

**Day Eighty Nine**

It’s almost sunset, they’ve spent the day exploring in the woods and she’s eaten every single mushroom they’ve come across. She’s still so tired.

“I want to control it. I want to choose what day I wake up in.”

He sighs, like _he’s_ the one who’s reliving the same conversations over and over.“Clarke, you can’t--”

“Can’t want to save Wells? Can’t have regrets? Can’t miss my best friend?”

“Can’t beat yourself up about this forever.”<

There’s a moment where he’s considering something, weighing it on his tongue before giving it a voice. When he does speak, he’s subdued and doesn’t meet her gaze until he’s finished.

 _ _“__ Why don’t you hate me? It was my shit advice that got in Charlotte’s head _ _.”__

She sighs, “C’mon, we both know it was more than that. It was Charlotte’s shit interpretation and the Ark’s shitty class system and my own stupid stubbornness and,” She reaches for his hand, “maybe a long time ago it’d be easier to hate you but I can’t do that anymore.”

She continues, “I keep saving people, keep trying my best but…...it never stops hurting.”

She risks a glance up at him, “how do I make it stop hurting?” Her voice cracks with her final question and there was a time when showing this much vulnerability in front of Bellamy would be laughable but she can’t imagine having this conversation with anyone else now.

“Maybe you need to grieve.” He says like he knows from experience and from what she’d gleaned about his past, maybe he does.

“Maybe you’re unconscious in the med tent and I’m waiting for you to wake up. Maybe your brain just needed a few days rest to process everything we’ve lost.”

“Every _one_ we’ve lost. So many, Bellamy….”

“It’s okay to admit that you’ve lost people, Clarke. Doesn’t make you less of a person. Makes you more, in my opinion. If you care.” He tacks on, like he still needs to distance his own vulnerability and she wishes she wasn’t alone in this, wishes he remembered all the conversations they’ve shared over the weeks and weeks she’s been stuck in this loop. This is just a regular Wednesday for him. When it’s so much more to her.

“I feel like we’ve never had a chance at winning.” She says.

“I suppose we didn’t.” He agrees.

She looks at the sun setting, casting the forest in shadows of orange and pink and it’s beautiful. For a moment, when she turns to look at the light on Bellamy’s face, she’s not as tired as she once felt.

**Day Ninety Six**

“Bellamy, stop here.” Her arm is out, blocking his path.

“Why? We’re so close.” His voice is closer to her ear than she expected since he abruptly stopped and she shivers involuntarily.

“Just trust me and stay here.”

“Clarke, there’s no way you can make it alone.”

“I’ve lived this all before, remember? I know what to avoid and you get in the way.”

“So tell me what to do!” His whispering is getting louder and she shushes him, as she really doesn’t need them to get discovered again. She’s already died three times trying to get here and yesterday was too close a call when he tried to take an arrow for her.

“I am! Just. Stay. Here.” She’s still shaken from the near miss and is as firm as she can be.

“Clarke, I can help.”

“ _You might die, okay!_ ” And her own whisper is getting forceful now. “If you come with me, I can’t protect you and you might die. And I can’t watch that. So stay here.”

“Do you make it if I come with you?”

“‘Bellamy….I can’t lose you---you kept me sane all this time. I…..not you too. That’s not an option.”

“It looks like it’s the only option.”

“I won’t let it be.”

“Tell Octavia that I---”

“No. You tell her yourself. After you stay here for just five more minutes.”

“C’mon Clarke, don’t act like you don’t already know what I’m gonna do. Time’s running out.”

“I don’t care. We’ll find a way.”

“Promise me you’ll keep going.” He’s got his hands on her shoulders and she wants to punch him in his stupid, earnest face.

“ _Please_ , Bellamy.” She moves her own hands up to his neck, her fingers starting to curl into the collar of his tattered jacket.

He smiles like an asshole and she thinks he’s about to kiss her. The thought causes her fingers to loosen their clasp near his wayward curls. Then he runs out from behind the thicket of trees, the bastard, and she hates him for it.

He darts to the left and she wants to call out his idiocy but knows not to waste too much time. She circles around the thicket to the right and doesn’t have to pause her steps to hide because the two guards who were standing watch have run off to chase Bellamy.

Clarke glances over her shoulder to gauge his progress and that’s when she sees his body being tackled to the ground. She’s out in the open with no cover but it doesn’t matter, she stops in the middle of her run and watches, in shock. This is her worst fear come to life.

The larger woman with braids in her hair yells something at Bellamy that Clarke can’t make out at this distance and then plunges a dagger into his belly. Clarke has to cover her mouth to stop a scream.

But she doesn’t have time to cry, to rage, to rail against his idiotic plan, not when her goal is so close. And he was right, his distraction gives her the opportunity she needs to get up to the barricaded wall and slip through the door, where they’ve heard tales of a strangely glowing orb worshiped by this clan of Grounders.

However, her heart isn’t in it. With Bellamy dead just fifty yards to her right she’s looking for an excuse to restart the day.

At the last second she steps too close to the wooden wall decorated with charred animal bones and hears a clicking sound too late. _A booby trap_ , is her last thought before the blinding light and pain.

**Day Ninety Seven**

She wakes up in her tent and… _it’s different_? The light isn’t the same. She’s seen this view from her bed a myriad number of times and knows in her gut that it’s different. Which means he was right. It worked. It wasn’t about the Earth at all, it was all about Bellamy. About letting him die.

She desperately wishes he was wrong. Wishes that this was another day where she could see him again. God, _she’ll never see him again_.

She changes her clothes and walks around aimlessly. Not hearing any of the conversations that are finally new and unpredictable. They seem so heartless now. How dare they continue to talk about planting crops when Bellamy’s dead.

Dead. The word feel foreign in her brain and she doesn’t look forward to saying it out loud

Then there’s a quietness that steals through the camp. It becomes solemn and subdued. Almost like they know already, but she hasn’t told anyone yet.

Oh God, she has to _tell people_ , she has to tell _Octavia_. She almost winces at the thought. In fact, today seems like it would be better spent back in her bed than out here with the kids who idolize Bellamy. She about to turn around when she notices that there’s a strange crowd at the gate to their camp and Jasper starts yelling her name. “Someone get Clarke!”

It’s the last thing she wants to do, but she rushes forward anyways, knowing it’s what Bellamy would do and she sees Lincoln’s face, pained from the exertion of dragging something behind him. No, some _one_.

She hears him before she sees him, he’s complaining up a storm and she runs up to the makeshift stretcher and a startled, happy cry bursts forth from her.

“Someone help me up,” Bellamy grumbles.

It takes Miller and Fox to get him to his feet and despite the fact that he’s leaning heavily on Miller and holding a poultice to his side, she continues to push through until she’s right next to him.

She doesn’t care that he seems terribly hurt and sweating, she wrap her arms around him. He staggers back from the extra weight as she presses her body to his but he remains upright and sturdy and solid and _alive_.

She feels terribly greedy that she gets to keep him when everyone else has so lost so much.

She leans back to check his side. “How? I saw you fall...The Grounder had a knife in you!”

“Lincoln found me. Put an arrow in my friend’s stomach and brought me to camp.” Upon inspection, the wound is a glancing blow, it’s deep but not the deadly attack that she saw from her angle.

She moves her hands across his stomach and up to his face, so that she’s cupping his cheeks. “I can’t believe it, is this real?”

He smiles, broad and cocky. “Looks like you’re stuck with me, Princess.” He looks wan and waxy and in pain but he’s never been more captivating, she can’t look away.

She can’t help it, she laughs, and it feels so good to release the dread and tension of the past one hundred days.

She feels younger than she has in months. “Come with me, let me patch that up.”

“Alright, but afterwards we’re gonna get you something other than cold oatmeal for breakfast.”

She stumbles a bit. “What?”

"I figured you’d be tired of it by now."

“You... _remember_?”

“It was just yesterday, Clarke. I didn’t get hit in the head.”

“What does this mean…is it over? Am I still in the loop?”

“It means we’re gonna get you some eggs.” He winks at her. “I know where Harper’s been hiding some.”


End file.
